For those who saw the BBC’s report (before it was pulled, but not after the damage was done), the report featured “journalist” Oles Buzyna, the same person who wrote that bard Taras Shevchenko “was not a genius or a Saint, but an alcoholic and green with envy.”

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

In 2003, Polish media reported that KGB defector Victor Suvorov (Vladimir Rizun) found documents and pictures in London which show that the Russian president’s father served in the Nazi-collaborating army led by Russian general Vlasov. Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin was apparently captured by British forces, but not before he helped crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. (In the photo above, Putin’s father is identified as the man on the far left.) Russian media spun the story to say that Putin Sr. was really like beloved Soviet fictional television hero Otto von Stirlitz, a Russian agent who had infiltrated the Nazi security service.

It appears that the Kremlin has launched (or reinvigorated) yet another smear campaign against president Yushchenko. The target of this campaign is Yushchenko’s father Andriy who was a POW in Auschwitz during WW2.

On April 14, the Regnum website reported that a book entitled Andrei Yushchenko: Personality and “the legend” by “Israeli historian” Yuri Vilner has hit the bookstores in the Russian capital. In it Vilner claims that Andrei Yushchenko lied about his WW2 activities, was a “polizei” of Nazi concentration camps and an informer to the Nazis.

Vilner apparently said that the “biography of the Ukrainian president’s father has become one of the most discussed topics in Ukraine in recent years.” The last time this reporter saw the issue raised was during the 2004 presidential elections in propaganda leaflets limited, for some reason, to the eastern regions of Ukraine.

Vilner claims that “most documents of the captive camps and concentration camps having to do with the name of Andrei Yushchenko are archived … mostly in the territory of Russia.” Reading between the lines: “the FSB’s specialists will have no problem fabricating documents about Andrei Yushchenko and present them as the real thing as they have in the cases of Yaroslav Stecko and John Demjaniuk in the past.”

I guess this historian has never heard of Yad Vashem’s archives or the 68 million Holocaust documents that have been digitized by Bad Arolsen Holocaust archives and the International Tracing Service in Germany.

The timing of Vilner’s book is arguably not accidental: it comes just a little over 3 weeks before the commemoration of the “Day of Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” celebrated every year on May 9.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Kyiv election commission has already registered 28 (!) candidates for the capital city mayoral race – but that’s not all. Commission head Halyna Bilyk said the commission has until April 19th to register all candidates: “around 140” submitted applications by the April 15 deadline.

In other news, the New York Times ran a piece about heavyweight boxing champ and mayoral candidate Vitali Klitschko. The article includes a poll conducted by the “Institut Goroda” described as an “analytical research center in Kiev” by journalist Vincent Mallozi. This reporter has never heard of the Institute and efforts to find a website for “Institut Goroda” or “Institut Mista” (as it would be in Ukrainian), proved fruitless. That poll suggests the following breakdown:

Klitschko 29.8%Chernovetsky 14.6Omelchenko 9.0

Other poll results revealed in Kyiv on Tuesday, by another unrecognizable polling organization, suggests the following breakdown (poll conducted March 22-26, 2,006 respondents, 2.2% error margin according to the UNIAN news agency:

Also on Tuesday Orthodox Archbishop Pavel denied that he will run for any political force in the elections. But the Communist Party’s press service showed the media a handwritten declaration by His Eminency that suggests the prelate was seriously considering running for political office. (copy of letter above)

Saturday, April 12, 2008

The head of the Party of the Regions Kyiv city organization Vasyl Horbal announced the “first five” on his political force’s list for the snap Kyiv city council elections. Horbal will head the list that also incude:2. Dmytri Tabchnyk (neo-Soviet historian, proponent of federalism)3. Inna Bogoslovska (formerly of pro-Kuchma, Pinchuk-backed political projects)4. Vladika Pavel (see below)5. Mikhail Reznikovich (on-again-off-again director of the awkwardly-named Lesia Ukrayinka Russian Language Drama Theater, where Tabachnyk’s wife Tetyana Nazarova works as an actress.)

Horbal said that some Communists were the source of earlier rumors that the Orthodox Church hierarch was planning to run for the Marxists-Leninists, According to news.liga.net. In the March 2006 elections, the Regions won 16 of 120 seats in Kyiv city council.Recall that Karl Marx stated that “religion is the opiate of the people” and that Lenin’s Bolsheviks spent 70 years pillaging churches, re-opening them as atheist museums and killing million of clergy and laity.His Eminence Pavel (Lebid) is the Archbishop of Vyshgorod (just outside Kyiv) and the Father Superior at the “Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra,” a.k.a. the Monastery of the Caves, guarded by warrior monks from the Rus Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

The word “cave” is a handy mnemonic for remembering how to pronunce Ukraine’s capital city name in the Ukrainian language. “Cave” is to “Kyiv” what “key-ev” or “key-eff” is to “Kiev.”To further extend the allegory of “Kyiv-Cave” one need not look beyond Plato’s Republic to understand what is happening in Ukrainian politics: before finding the truth, one needs separate it from the false reality and the manufactured truth. With the voters as the cavemen.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Preliminary numbers are now available from the 2006 Census of Canada. Some relevant figures for the Ukrainian community are as follows.

1,209,085 Canadians identified themselves as being of Ukrainian or partial Ukrainian heritage, compared to 1,071,060 in 2001. Of these respondents, 300,590 (compared to 326,200 in 2001) claimed to be single origin Ukrainian Canadians, and 908,495 claimed to be multiple origin (744,860 was the total in 2001).

The number of single origin Ukrainians has declined as mixed marriages continue to transform the make-up of Canadian society as a whole, according to my source.

The number of Ukrainians by province, listed in descending order, with the 2001 figures given brackets, is as follows:

The urban sprawl known as the Greater Toronto Area includes Mississauga with 18,960, Oakville 6,430, Burlington 6,990, and Vaughn 5,005 for GTA total of nearly 160,000, some 26,000 more than in Edmonton.

Results presented by Nikolai Churylov, director of the “Socis” Center of political and marketing research.

Churylov said that 33.3% of respondents think that Chernovetsky will stay on as mayor, while 20.4% think that Klitschko will win the title.

The poll of 2,000 Kyivans was conducted March 27 to April 3 and has 2.2% error margin, according to Socis.

Churylov’s 32% is high compared to Vyshnyak’s 25% for the incumbent. Both men however agree that Chernovestky will come out on top.

Churylov has been a darling of the municipal pro-Chernovetsky media holding run by media master Kazbek Bektursynov since at least September of last year, when the two men declared that 66% of capital city residents are “completely satisfied that they are living in Kyiv today.”

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Ukrayinska Pravda reported on Thursday that the Party of the Regions will nominate Dmitri Tabachnik to run for mayor of Kyiv from that party. UP cites Regions heavyweight Andriy Klyuyev as the source. If true, then the Regions have decided to run a candidate who will a) not pose any serious threat to Chernovetsky and b) will draw attention away from Chernovetsky by focusing the national democrats on the “evil genius” Tabachnyk. Not much on the genius part, from that I’ve seen.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

“Express Poll” results from “Ukrainian Sociology Service”(Oleksandr Vyshnyak) made public on April 2. They suggest that Chernovetsky, with 25%, would retain his seat if the election was held in one round (the system currently in place). The results also showed that support for the incumbent has doubled in the last five months (since Nov. 2007).

However, if the vote was held in two rounds, Klitschko would clobber Chernovetsky 47 to 32. Chernovetsky has the edge over five other candidates, including Oleksandrs Turchynov and Omelchenko, Mykola Katerynchuk and Yuri Lutsenko.

As for the race for 120 capital city council seats, the express poll found:

Seventy percent of Kyiv-men said they will take part in the May 25 elections. More than 55% said they support the Rada’s decision to sanction the snap vote for Kyiv city council that has just completed half of its two year term. 1,000 adult Kyiv-men polled, March 22-27, +/- 3.2% Original: http://news.liga.net/news/N0816503.html

The Party of Regions is expecting to win 15% in the Kyiv Council elections, MP Boris Kolesnikov said on April 2. Regions’ dame Hanna Herman said her party will choose their candidate on April 7.

According to Ukrainian News “on March 27, Presidential Secretariat Chief Viktor Baloha called on the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense block to back Vitaliy Klitschko as a single candidate in the Kyiv mayoral elections.”

Meanwhile the Ukrayinska Narodna Partita (led by Yuri Kostenko) is considering Obolon beer magnate Oleksandr Slobodian as their man for mayor. The UNP said it will run independently in an April 2 statement.

Further to the right, the Kyiv city organization of the Svoboda Party on April 2 resolved to put forth Oleh Tiahnybok from Lviv as their man for Kyiv mayor.

Mykola Katerynchuk self-nominated on April 2.

Former environment minister Serhiy Kurykin will run for the Green Party

In other news, Volodymyr Lytvyn said he doubts two-round Kyiv mayor elections....

But don’t take my word for it! For a great election resource see Liga’s Bytva za Kyiv:http://file.liga.net/event/18.html

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

At a televised press conference in Kyiv today Yulia Tymoshenko said that her political force is lobbying for two-round mayoral elections not only for Kyiv, but for all cities across the country!

When asked about a single candidate from the anti-Chernovetsky (aka “opposition” on the Kyiv city level) forces in the current Kyiv race, Tymoshenko essentially said that Byut is the most popular political party in Kyiv and should therefore have first dibs on nominating a candidate. Meanwhile, Vitaly Klitschko’s press people said that their candidate has already weighed-in with his registration papers...

Back on March 20, Kommersant-Ukrayina reported that Byut is planning to win nearly 60% of seats in Kyiv city council, based on internal polling.Rada deputy Anatoly Semynoha, head of the Byut Kyiv city organization, said that the bloc’s electoral list will be compiled by three parties, as was the case in the 2006 elections: Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), Reforms & Order and the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party. (The latter should not to be confused with SPDU(o). Although in Ukrainian politics you could never know.)Kommersant notes that in last September’s Rada elections, Byut scored the support of 45% of Kyiv-men and women. Two years ago, in the last normal, regular general elections of March 2006, Byut won just 25% in the Kyiv city council vote.

President Bush: …Laura and I are honored to sit with you on Ukrainian soil, and we bring the greetings of the American people, or as you'd say, "Vitaiyu Vas” (Laughter and Applause.)

It’s not quite the “Boritesya poboryty” Bill Clinton managed to mondo when he was in Kyiv in June of 2000. But Bush can also say "Holodomor". In my books, Ukrainians are still waiting for the US president who can manage the “Svoboda narodam! Svoboda lyudyni” 1943 tongue-twister after a couple...

Last month Vakhtang Kipiani – chief editor of the “Great Ukrainians” TV project – wrote an insightful piece for Korrespondent magazine (#10, March 15, 2008) with the provocative title “If Shukhevych was a Jew.”“Roman Shukhevych was not particular in the methods he used battle. But other nations’ freedom fighters behaved in the same way,” he wrote and went on to compare the biographies of Shukhevych and Menachem Begin (Irgun commader and premier of Israel [1977-83]), both considered to be founding fathers by their respective countrymen. Here’s a fragment:

“Does the history of Israel not have its own Banderas and Shukhevyches, fanatical heroes who were ready sacrifice their own lives and the lives of others on the altar of statehood? Of course it does. In fact, the May 14 1948 Declaration of Independence is written with the blood of hundreds of British soldiers and officials, not to mention thousands of native Arab Palestinians. That’s no exaggeration. Yet Israel does not deny its founding fathers a place in the book of saints.”“Compare two biographies. As a youth, UPA General Roman Shukhevych was a member of the paramilitary scouting association Plast, while Premier Menachem Begin was an activist of the Betar youth military union. The former dreamed of an independent Ukraine “from the Syan to the Kavkaz” as envisioned by Ukrainian nationalist writer Mykola Mikhnovsky. The latter dreamed of the Eretz Israel envisioned by his mentor Vladimir Zhabotynsky, the Zionist ideologue from Odesa who called upon his youth “to rule with fist and staff, march and forge ahead, be laborious, orderly and despise delinquency; respect women, the elderly, prayer and democracy.” Sounds like an order for Plast boyscouts!""For his membership in OUN, Shukhevych passed through Polish prisons, while “Betarite” Begin sat in the penal camps of the GULAG. Both were freed thanks to WW2. The Ukrainian went underground with the OUN, while the Jewish fellow enlisted in General Anders’ Polish Army that was being formed on the territory of the USSR. Fate gave him a gift: his unit was sent to Jordan in the Middle East. By 1942 he was in the Promised Land, as a commander of the militant Irgun (Etzel) whose goal was to free Palestine of the British colonial administration while “cleansing” it of the openly inimical Arab population. That same year Roman Shukhevych took command of the UPA Ukrainian Insurgent Army and also waged a war on two fronts: against Soviet and German invaders. Both heroes were hunted after, hid under false names and documents, changed their physical appearance.""In his last years the UPA general: participated in the democratization of OUN and creation of a multi-party proto-parliament – the UHVR Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council. He continued to command a sustained armed resistance in his native Carpathian forest and died while trying to evade capture on March 5, 1950.""After the proclamation of the State of Israel, “terrorist” and “killer of English soldiers” Begin became am influential Knesset politician. It took 17 years of Independence for the Ukrainian state to honor the memory of Shukhevych."